The packaging of items not only protects the item from the environment up to the point of use but also often provides information about the safe use of the item.
This is especially true for pharmaceuticals where the packaging contains information about the application of the pharmaceutical, and have a registration number to identify the pharmaceutical, expiration date for quality control, a charge or lot number to allow traceability and often also a barcode for machine readability. The packaging also provides protection of the pharmaceutical against environmental influences to prevent deterioration between the moment of production and the moment of application (administering).
A common type of packaging for one or more doses is a blister. This is basically a cavity formed around the pharmaceutical dose by two layers that are meet around the dose and form a seal where they meet. The dose can be removed from the cavity by applying pressure to one side of the cavity and either forcing the seal apart or fracturing or rupturing of one of the two layers.
A typical blister has a rupturable surface on the back of the blister made of a thin metal foil. Pharmaceuticals are known to be repackaged. In such a repackaging operation either the entire non-severed blister with multiple doses is being inserted into a new external package or the dose is being removed from the blister and put into another blister or a container of another kind.
Repackaging introduces problems in the traceability of the pharmaceuticals.
To provide room for extra information while leaving the manufacturer's packaging intact U.S. Pat. No. 8,403,212 discloses an information card for attaching to a blister holding an item such as a pharmaceutical dose. The information card comprises a rim area around an opening in the information card for attaching the information card to the blister, the opening allowing the information card to be positioned around the item. This allows additional information to be added to the blister while leaving the protective blister intact.
Such information cards allow proper tracking of the item in the blister in factories, during transport, in the shop but also for instance in a hospital environment where closed loop administration of pharmaceuticals improves patient safety.
In U.S. Pat. No. 8,403,212 an information card is attached to the manufacturer's intact packaging. The information card provides the information about the pharmaceutical with each individual dose in order to ensure the correct administering of the pharmaceutical to the patient.
As the information card disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,403,212 holds a single dose it has the disadvantage that the information card must be handled individually, introducing the risk of loss.